Mexicanizing America

A friend of mine, who lives in the thick of the Arizona conflict concerning illegal Mexican migrants, sent me a web site that you really should read:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty59.htm.

It features an article by a man named Frosty Wooldridge (I am not making this name up!).It was the cause of my response to her e-mail:

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"The article you sent that I read (and I have read this sort of extremism before), was, as you said, an interesting viewpoint.

However, it is just that--"a viewpoint".

There is no denying that when large groups of anyone involved in anything exists in one place there is going to be a percentage of bad apples. Is this not sound reasoning?

Here is the problem-the conservatives use this reasoning ONLY when it suits them.

Let me explain: In the Bill O'Reilly columns that I receive weekly, he has been defending the war in Iraq and blasting the Mexican immigration problem.

When he talks of the war in Iraq and the crimes committed by "some" of our troops, he says something to the effect,

"Whenever you have large groups of anyone doing anything, you are going to have some who are bad apples...they should be prosecuted etc..."

I agree with that. Not all American troops are good people. When you have a gazillion of them running around in one place, there is bound to be trouble and they should be dealt with. Does not this make sense?

Nevertheless, when Bill talks of the Mexican immigration problem, he paints a picture with a large and sweeping brush. He says something to the effect (this is a paraphrase so do not send me nasty emails):

**All illegals are drug runners.
**All illegals are murderers.
**All illegals want to rape your daughters.
**All illegals want to rape, rob, and pillage you.

Therefore, he is willing to cut the army some slack by saying that "some" do bad things because this is "inevitable" when there are large groups of anyone doing anything in one place, but he is not willing to cut the Mexicans the same slack using the same logic.

Now...

I simply ask the question: Are "ALL" illegals, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, going to kill, rape, rob, and pillage you?

Yes, they are law-breakers in the sense that they have sneaked into America without going through the legal channels. Therefore, they are called illegals. However, are "ALL" of them, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, cut throat killers?

If the answer is yes, then how many are there who are raping, killing, plundering, and pillaging? I want figures and not isolated, exaggerated numbers. I want names of ALL of the victims.

Let me point something out: I wrote a piece about crime in Mexico against Americans. In fact, I wrote two pieces. Both of these columns ended up in my new book (see below for details). For my research, I found out that though the State Department released "WARNINGS" of the imminent kidnapping of Americans, especially in the border towns, they had ABSOLUTELY NO figures to support that statement. In fact NO ONE DOES!

I am not making this up!

They issued warnings that painted the picture that Mexicans are just sitting at the border waiting for hapless Americans to dare step one foot across the border and BOOM--they are kidnapped. But they had NO statistics to support the warning. THE STATS DID NOT EXIST!Why, I ask, did the State Department release a warning, which affected tourism greatly this year, when they had NO statistics to back it up? Why?

I do not doubt when there are large groups of Mexicans crossing the border illegally there will be SOME who are not good people. I suppose you could argue that not all of them are good because they are crossing the border illegally. However, are ALL OF THEM WITHOUT EXCEPTION cutthroats ready to do you in at the slightest provocation? Are they?

If the State Department will fabricate a kidnapping threat (and, by the way, I have several sources corroborating this), I do not have much faith in the 20-million-illegals figure that the anti-Mexican faction floats into the public arena. I just don't. I want to see sources for this figure.

Also, do you know who these "illegals" actually are? They are the campesinos--the Indigenous. They are the outcasts. They are the invisible people. They believe that Americans throw $100 bills on the sidewalks and all you have to do is come there and pick up money off the streets. This is what they believe because this is what they are told by the evil men who manipulate them.

They have NO opportunities here mostly because that is what they are made to believe. For American op-ed writers to say that Fox refuses to do anything about them is absurd to the point of making me physically ill. How would the linguistically illiterate American journalist know what Fox says anyway? I listen to him in Spanish, all the time; I read the papers, all the time. I am here in this country and speaking of viewpoints...

A drug problem--drug running--would not exist if the drug-addicted American public did not provide the market! Now, note I just generalized. I do not believe that every American, without exception, is a drug addict. But apparently, enough are to warrant a drug running trade.Are some who cross the border drug-runners? Yes indeed. But guess who their customers are? Is there something a little hypocritical about this?

The hypocrisy of this depresses me. Americans are so quick to perpetuate their Mexican stereotypes that all Mexicans are drug runners (and worse); all the while, they are snorting that coke up their noses.

Do you get what I am trying to say!

More hypocrisy: Americans are hiring, in many cases knowingly, the illegals that are crossing the borders.

When I look at these dear and wonderful people and then think of the kind of rhetoric I read in that article you sent, I am moved to wanting to denounce my citizenship (not really, but I have felt the urge). I would rather live in Mexico for the rest of my life than come back to a country with people in it like the gomer who wrote that article.

Do something about a perceived problem but do not stereotype the rest of Mexico because of a few bad apples. Stop living your life according to untested assumptions.

Should I start writing that all of America, without exception, is nothing but a bunch of baby aborting-killing, drug snorting lunatics? No, I would not do that because it is not true.

However, for some reason, American writers, and conservatives like O'Reilly, feel that are doing no wrong in painting a picture of ALL OF MEXICO as cutthroat, drug-running rapists, who are out to kill you and your family. Do you really think that your 55-year-old house cleaner, an illegal YOU hired, and maybe even knowing she was an illegal, is a robbing, raping, murdering, pillaging maniac ready to kill you in your sleep? Do you?

The funny thing is that we have met many tourists who come to Mexico for the first time in their lives and tell us how it is nothing as they have read in the American press or have grown up believing.

Allow me to make this point--that sort of rhetoric, which I would call hateful and bigoted, does nothing but reinforce the false and negative American-fabricated stereotype of Mexico.

American textbooks surprisingly(?) lack much of the historical rhetoric which led up to the Mexican-American conflict in the 1800's when America robbed and pillaged a sovereign state's property to make Mexican property their own--America has done this over and over again with the Mexicans and Native Americans. They wanted someone else's land so they took it with superior forces and arms--Imperialism!

This is history, but it is not in the American history textbooks....

Here is a little of the rhetoric used to justify taking Mexico's land in 1821:

"Pioneer America could find little to approve of in the Mexican society it collided with, being affronted in all its major convictions by Mexican attitudes, real and alleged. Americans, in their Protestant individualism, in their ideas of spirit and hard work, in their faith in progress through technology, in their insistence upon personal hygiene, in Puritanism and racial pride, found Mexico much to their distaste because of its priestly power, its social stratification with a pronounced sense of caste, its apparent devotion to pleasure and its indifference to cleanliness, and its reputation for pervasive sensuality ... Adding to all this was the Anglo-Saxon's contempt for a people who had lowered themselves to a state of general cohabitation with the Indians and had thus forfeited the right to be considered "white." (Robinson, 1977)"[1]

It was a demonization of the Mexican that, in the minds of the conquering American imperialists, justified taking their land.

That article you sent me is full of "what does not nor will ever work". America is full of these kinds of people--they never sit down, self-examine, and then say to themselves,

"Hey, this does not work let's figure out something that does."

That is what it will take--both sides--sitting down and throwing out what hasn't worked in the past, and finding a solution that works for both parties. That is what it means to negotiate!

Does it not?

In addition, I would tell Mr. Frosty Wooldridge that LEGAL Mexicans are returning to Mexico in droves because of the Mexican-hating American treatment they are receiving at the hands of the good and self-righteous Americans. That would make him happy I suppose.

That is the problem with extremists like ole Frosty the Snowman...he fails, as does O'Reilly, to point out all of the American-law-abiding LEGAL Mexican immigrants who do nothing wrong. So, Americans, being the total ding-dongs that they most certainly can often be, fail to make the distinction between LEGALS and ILLEGALS and believe that anyone with a brown skin is the evil raping and pillaging Spic or Greaser that the press paints all of Mexico to be.

That is why my sister, and most every other expat's family, will not come to visit us in Mexico. They are led to believe, by writers like Frosty (the Snowman) Wooldridge, that Mexico is full of nothing but a bunch of killers. This is what their senseless and ill-conceived writing does!

THIS MAKES ME SICK!

There is an American citizen in San Miguel de Allende. She is of Mexican heritage--she is dark skinned--and is married to a white-skinned American man. When she is with her husband walking around the streets of San Miguel, the expat community talks to them and they have a gay old time. When she is walking the streets without her husband, she is the victim of American expat racism. She is totally ignored.

There are more Americans living in San Miguel's downtown than there are Mexicans. There are more than 10,000 white faces in SMA. I have seen Americans physically assault Mexicans for no other reason than the Mexican was in their way! I can corroborate this with additional eyewitness accounts.

Americans are a racist people and, when they move to another country, they bring their psychopathologies with them. They treat Mexicans here like their personal slaves.Mr. Frosty's article is, in my view, the rantings of a racist.

This is just my "freedom of speech" opinion and not meant to offend or harm anyone. It is what I think.

I have always contended that these types of bigots use causes, i.e. the Immigration Issue, as a ploy, a ruse, a deception to promote their real agendas. These gomers do not want to get rid of "illegals"; they want to get rid of all non-whites. It does not matter, I would suggest, whether a Mexican is legal or illegal. These racists just want to get rid of all non-whites, period.

To prove this point, here is what Frosty Wooldridge has on the site you sent me(http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty59.htm):

"Ladies and gentlemen of America-we are LOSING all four factors. If you look around you, we are losing the cohesive thread of our society at over four million legal and illegal immigrants annually. They are not assimilating nor are they speaking our language."

Need I say more?"

[1] EXPERT REPORT OF ALBERT M. CAMARILLO Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger, et al., No. 97-75321(E.D. Mich.)

Doug Bower is a freelance writer and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad. He is a columnist with Cricketsoda.com and the Magic City Morning Star. He is also listed with Ezinearticles.com. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico. His newest book Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country can now be seen at http://www.lulu.com/content/126241